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The Leopard

Book Notes

This book is number eight in the Harry Hole series. As such, I really need to put links to the whole list at some point. After reading The Bat, book one of the series, I sought this book out from (you guessed it) the stack of books from Mom. I will finish that stack of books. Really.

This book starts out confusingly, from the perspective of the first victim of HEY NO SURPRISE a serial killer. It takes awhile to understand the particular method of death, mostly when it happens again. I wasn't particularly able to "see" this book the way I could see the previous one, given this one is back in Norway, and not Sydney (of course). There are a number of life path changes that happened as a result of the previous book in the series, which I hadn't read, so yeah, I was confused a bit.

This one has Harry in Hong Kong, using opium instead of alcohol to numb himself. Why he's there is the subject of the previous book, which is also the first Hole book to be turned into a movie, so I might have to read it at some point. He is convinced to return to Norway, works on the case, has a number of strange romantic twists (complete with confusing real-world "Is she interested? I can't tell" moments), and several "we caught the bad guy NO WAIT WE DIDN'T" endings. You know the actual ending only because you read the last page.

Nesbo is vague enough with his descriptions and his use of pronouns that you're never really sure who is who in the books. This is one that I'm uncertain could be translated into a movie for that reason. The ending was a little surprising to me because of the use of pronouns, and that, like real life, the first guess is not always the correct answer, so I have to say, I'll be reading the remaining books in this series pronto.

This series is recommended.

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